“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
Isaiah 45:9
those who are nothing but potsherds
among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
‘What are you making?’
Does your work say,
‘The potter has no hands’?
I dug up a lot of pottery at Tel Dan. Some sherds (broken pieces of pottery) are small while others are large. The most important pieces are those with distinctive attributes, like handles, bases, or rims. Most body pieces aren’t distinctive enough for good analysis.
Why is pottery so important? Pottery is used to date what is around it. Because pottery has a relatively short shelf life, is so widely used, and changed over time, finding it in context with other items (like our wall) helps date what we’re looking at. When similar styles are matched across different sites, the same eras are linked up. This is part of how the past is reconstructed.
